Work With, Not Against the Drug Addict

Posted by Tony Bylsma on June 8, 2010 under How to Help a Drug Addict | Be the First to Comment

Helping an addict to overcome addiction can be tremendously rewarding. It also isn’t the easiest thing you’ll ever do.

Often, the battle is more about getting started than anything else. You must have their willingness before any progress will be made. In order to actually help a drug addict, he or she must be engaged. This is job one. You have to get the person into a clean communication with you or your job will be thrice as hard.

Real communication must be established or the rest of your time is going to be wasted; only after he is willing to talk openly with you about the problem can you be of any help. So first, communication, then help. If you get these two steps backwards, if you jump right in and try to correct things for him without his agreement, you’ll only make matters worse

It has to go that way. This is so important that without it your progress will be thrown back into the stone age of psychotherapy, when they spoke endlessly of “your mother resented you”, or, “you have an Oedipus complex, so you must hate your father and that is why you shoot heroin!”

Communication, not confrontation.

To get the addict comfortable and speaking candidly can be a challenge, but it is always possible. It is important to keep in mind, this is communication, not confrontation. It will be difficult enough to gain the confidence of the addict when he or she feels comfortable, but to gain it when he feels threatened? That’s not going to happen.

It won’t help, at this stage, to point out the screw-ups or broken promises of the user. Doing that could just throw all your efforts out the window. You must first make it clear that you and he are working together to overcome his destructive tendencies, the addiction, the mistakes.

It is not you against him. It is you and him against the addiction.

Nearly every addict feels terrible about what he or she has done while addicted, even if it isn’t admitted at this point. Eventually they will begin to show that responsibility, and then you’ll see the remorse.

But before you can help, establish the fact that it is safe to talk candidly with you and that your help might just be what is needed to finally turn things around.

Help save someone’s life.